


Hating Christmas Break (And Then Not.)

by brandonsaad (createadisaster)



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Christmas, Fluff and Angst, M/M, New Relationship, Teen Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-12
Updated: 2013-01-12
Packaged: 2017-11-25 04:49:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,559
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/635283
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/createadisaster/pseuds/brandonsaad
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sirius Black hates Christmas break. Remus hates it a little less. Then, neither hates it at all.</p><p>Written for the Winter Wolfstar Wank for the prompt 'Hogwarts Era'.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hating Christmas Break (And Then Not.)

Sirius Black III fucking hated Christmas break.

Not just hated, but _fucking_ hated, of course, because he was a fifteen year old boy, and what better time was there to fucking swear way fucking more than fucking necessary than when you’re a fucking fifteen year old boy and you’re fucking home for the holidays and you have to deal with your fucking mother?

(Sirius Black III also fucking hated his mother.)

He hated Christmas break because he was home, except the house he’d grown up in wasn’t home anymore, now, was it, now that home was three reckless, wild boys who had big smiles and messy bedrooms? Home was James’ laugh and Peter’s toast and Remus’ freckled shoulders. Home was not this dark, cold manor, full of rooms no one used and house elves no one treated with dignity or respect and absolutely empty of gifts, compassion, or love. This manor was not his home, and yet he was not allowed to go anywhere else, and his father had spelled the windows and doors shut to him, and he was writing letters to Remus that he wasn’t allowed to send. He hated missing Remus so much that it ached, hated not being kissed or touched or smiled at. He hated not having him close.

He hated Christmas break.

He hated it because he was _this fucking close_ to mastering the transformation from human to dog to back again and yet he couldn’t work on it because there were eyes on him at all times,. He hated it because there was no music allowed in the Black household, or, at least, none he wanted to hear. He hated it because he and his friends had already exchanged their gifts and it wasn’t as though Sirius could expect any additional presents. He hated it because his parents would throw an extravagant party, and he would have to smile politely and dress well and make small talk with people he _loathed_ , with dangerous, violent people that he could not really afford to anger—but all he wanted to do was to tell everyone in this house and everyone in his family that they could go fuck themselves to hell and back, and he would not give a single flying fuck if he never saw any of them again.

Regulus had become even more of a prat than usual, flourishing under the praise of their parents, though Sirius not so privately held the opinion that said praise was entirely unearned, and received for no reason beyond that Regulus was _not Sirius_. Regulus had been sorted into Slytherin as expected, and he displayed the appropriate amount of distaste for anyone who couldn’t trace their pureblooded family history back until the dawn of time, and he scorned the Muggles who lived in the rest of their neighborhood. Regulus’ bedroom was not coated in pictures of pretty Muggle girls who wore bikinis and smiled from their stationary poses and he didn’t play “that awful racket” so loud that Walburga stormed in and blew Sirius’ record player to bits, and he didn’t write letters to friends that were “beneath you, you are a _Black_ , you are _above them!_ ”

Sirius did not think his friends were beneath him. He thought his family was beneath him, and said as much.

\- - -

Remus Lupin did not usually hate Christmas break.

He was rather fond of his family, most of the time. His mom made his favorite foods and his dad ruffled his hair whenever he walked by him even though “ _Dad_ , I’m fifteen, you really can stop doing that now.” He got to see his aunt and her young daughter, and he liked them very much. He liked the time he got alone to read, and he liked exchanging gifts with some of his favorite people, and he liked writing letters to his friends at home with their families.

(Remus Lupin did not usually hate anything.)

But this year, he hated it because he missed his friends, mostly. He wanted to see James run his hand through his hair and ruin it entirely, he wanted Peter to laugh openly and broadly and with reckless abandon. He wanted Sirius to smile like he had a secret, and he wanted him to hold his hand under tables when he thought he could get away with it, and he wanted him to write notes to him and sneak them into places he wasn’t expecting to find them, reminders that he was head over heels for him, written in Sirius’ painfully elegant script that he couldn’t actually outgrow. He wanted to see them again.

He hated Christmas break a little bit. 

The full moon was over the holidays and he hated that, mostly. He hated the way his parents looked at him with pity the next morning as his mother wrapped his arms in bandages and he hated that he would go back to school with new scars, and he hated the fact that every single time the door opened he was hoping that he would see long dark hair and bright grey eyes and he hated that his father watched him so carefully on the days after the moon and he hated that his father wasn’t ruffling his hair anymore because he thought he might break his only son and he hated, hated, hated that Sirius had not written him a single fucking letter yet.

Sirius hadn’t written him a single letter, and Remus was getting a little bit worried. He had never really thought of himself as the pining type, but they were still fairly new as being anything more than friends, and he had kissed him goodbye at the train station, but briefly, and privately, and Remus was trying very hard not to wonder if maybe Sirius had changed his mind, and, because he was basically an overgrown toddler with no sense of how to properly communicate with people or express his feelings, he was showing it by just pretending Remus didn’t exist. And Remus had been sending letters, see, tons of them, sending his owl out several times a day because he just kept thinking of new things he wanted Sirius to know, and he’d been scrawling notes about his day onto any spare scrap of parchment and he’d been shoving them all into envelopes and sending them off to My Absolutely Mad Padfoot, Highest Window On The Left, Number 12 Grimmauld Place, Borough of Islington, London. 

Remus had gotten letters back from Peter and James, planning out what they’d do when they returned. None came from Sirius.

\- - -

Sirius Black III thought of Remus when he looked out the window and saw the full moon and ached for his friend, and he wrote another letter, and his mother burned it when she saw him trying to use the family owl. He thought of Remus when he lay alone in bed, watching the ceiling and wishing it was the curtains of his bed at Hogwarts rather than the plaster of the ancestral home of the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black. He thought of Remus on New Years Eve and wished he could kiss him, and he swore to himself that he was never coming to this place again.

Remus Lupin thought of Sirius when his mother fussed over his bandages, because Sirius always worried in his way, worried with stolen glances when he thought Remus wasn’t looking and quiet questions when he knew no one else could hear and the gentlest of touches when he snuck into his bed that night and kissed him until they both fell asleep. He thought of Sirius when he finished reading _The Great Gatsby_ , again, because he’d always thought that Sirius would make an excellent Jay Gatsby if he tried, though Remus himself was destined to be more of a James Gatz. He thought of Sirius on New Years Eve and wished he could kiss him, and he swore to himself that he was going to ask Sirius to come home with him next Christmas.

Sirius kept writing letters, and trying to send them, and Walburga or Orion kept snatching them and ripping them apart or burning them, and Sirius tried every sneaking-around trick he knew, and every time, he was dragged back to his room and tossed in rather unceremoniously. His parents kept a close eye on the Floo system, and Sirius sort of missed his childhood, because at least then they were _absent,_ and he could run around however he damn well pleased. Sirius wanted to tell Remus that he missed him, because he did, and because he was trying not to let such things fill up in his head, because his brain was so full of Remus that he just wasn’t getting anything done. His hands felt shaky. He missed him terribly.

Remus kept writing letters, and sending them, and waiting anxiously for a reply, and never getting any. He got too excited whenever an owl rapped on the window, and his parents exchanged knowing glances and speculated over dinner who Remus’ new girlfriend was. Remus figured that the “actually, he’s a bloke, and he’s a pureblood, actually, and his family already hate him enough without knowing he’s dating a halfblood werewolf, because who are we kidding, I’m sort of an abomination and he is way too good for me as it is.” But Sirius once said he thought his scars were sexy, and he’d kissed the one that stretched across his ribcage, and he’d whispered something into his skin that Remus hadn’t quite been able to catch. Remus missed him terribly.

\- - -

There were three more days until they would return to school, and Remus was practically going mad with waiting. He loved his family very much, but there was a limit to how much of them he could take at a time, especially when he hadn’t seen or heard from Sirius at all, and James and Peter said they hadn’t either, and he edged out of suspicion or paranoia for the status of their sort of relationship and verged into suspicion and paranoia of _oh Merlin his family is absolutely mad, what if he’s hurt, what if they’ve done something to him, I knew I should have asked him to come here with me instead, what if something’s happened to him_? Remus was a grade A worrier, as brave and logical as he liked to think of himself as, and he was not handling missing Sirius that well. He was having trouble sleeping, actually, and one night he wandered down to his kitchen long after his parents had gone to bed.

Sirius Black was seated at his kitchen table, having a cup of tea as though that was a perfectly normal thing to be doing at three o clock in the fucking morning when Remus hadn’t heard from him in weeks and why the hell hadn’t he answered any letters and what was that bruise on his cheek and look how beautiful those eyes are and Remus was torn between demanding answers angrily and running to him to kiss the hell out of him. He wanted to throttle him a little bit and he also wanted to hug him tight and he also wanted to put some ice on that bruise and he also wanted to make him promise not to fucking worry him like that again, ‘Merlin, Sirius, I was losing my mind!’ He decided to do none of those things, and stood in the doorway and cleared his throat. 

“Nice to see you, Black,” he said, his voice even, because he was torn between worry and anger and joy and also it was very, very late and he wasn’t entirely sure that this isn’t some sort of weird hallucination based on a lack of sleep. “Are you enjoying your tea?” He stepped toward the table and sat down across from him, eyes stuck on the other boy, mind reeling. He wanted to touch him but wasn’t quite sure how, so he extended a leg underneath the table and let his foot hook around Sirius’ ankle.

“Very much so,” Sirius answered, managing a weak smile. “I, er. I missed you.” Remus breathed in sharply, staring at Sirius across the table. “I missed you, see, and Orion kept stealing the letters I wrote you, and it turned out they’d been hoarding the ones _you’d_ been sending me, and er, I got a little bit mad, and they were saying the most horrible things about you, and I just. I ran, I guess. I’ll have to go back for the summer, but, um. I really couldn’t quite manage staying there any longer.”

Remus cleared his throat and nodded, eyes wide. “Oh,” he managed, trying to comprehend this. “So you… you must have Flooed here, yes?” He glanced toward the fireplace, and, yes, sure enough—definite signs of Sirius, because Sirius never wiped his feet of ashes before coming in, and there were ashy footprints leading to where Sirius had left his combat boots, and Remus slipped his bare foot down to brush against Sirius’, and yes, there it was, Sirius Black was sitting at the Lupin’s kitchen table wearing the lumpy socks that Remus had tried (and mostly succeeded) to knit him, and Remus broke into a big smile. “I missed you, too,” he told him, and watched Sirius’ face light up.

They could worry about explaining this to Sarah and John in the morning. They could worry about cleaning up the ashes, they could worry about putting away Sirius’ shoes, they could worry about washing the mugs they’d had their tea in. In fact, they could worry about any number of things, but instead, Remus scooted his chair over next to Sirius’ and kissed him soundly, curling his fingers into long silky hair and feeling smooth hands pulling him into Sirius’ lap. He didn’t have a worry in the world when Sirius was kissing him this way, all desperation and relief and (dare he even think it?) love.

Remus kept kissing Sirius that night, and they told each other all of the things that they’d written in their letters that they hadn’t been able to share with each other. “I worried about you during the moon,” Sirius confessed, and that earned another kiss from Remus. “I tried to remember how to waltz, and I think you need to teach me again, because I broke a lamp,” Remus explained to him, and he didn’t even care if Sirius’ raucous laughter woke his parents. “I decided that I don’t want to miss you anymore,” Sirius offered, and Remus smiled gently at him and replied, “I decided that you never have to.”

Together, Sirius Black and Remus Lupin decided that Christmas break wasn’t so bad after all, and they spent a few days laughing with Remus’ parents and talking about the books and playing in the snow like children until they both had red noses and bright eyes, and then they went inside and sat in front of the fireplace to warm up and then they kissed, they kissed with reckless abandon and exploring hands, and their lips were always bitten cherry red and then they smiled at each other, smiled big and happily, because they were young and they were in love and they held hands on the train back to Hogwarts.


End file.
